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An Ode to Blockbuster and Other [Video Rental Stores]

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I used to work at Hollywood Video. The one thing that I really remember are the bad knock offs that got released right as the real movies hit theaters. Awful cover art, slightly similar names and always a few angry customers who thought they were getting the real deal.

I used to work at Hollywood Video. The one thing that I really remember are the bad knock offs that got released right as the real movies hit theaters. Awful cover art, slightly similar names and always a few angry customers who thought they were getting the real deal.

I'm glad Netflix is keeping that tradition alive.

My grandmother (whom I've established here previously as a crazy person) would frequently rent those movies and tell people she saw the real version. The thing is, she didn't think she was lying. She legitimately thought she was, like, the smartest person in town who had some inside track on these new movies in collusion with her local video store and had pulled one over on all the movie theaters.

I used to work at Hollywood Video. The one thing that I really remember are the bad knock offs that got released right as the real movies hit theaters. Awful cover art, slightly similar names and always a few angry customers who thought they were getting the real deal.

I love the day when my mom and pop store changed from badly photocopied SNES manuals to a generic hint and instruction page and it was interesting to find out the reason for that years later.

what uh

was the reason

In the late 80's the video game companies, spearheaded by Nintendo joined forces with whatever the US PC software association was and decided to sue practically the entire rental industry in the US.

The software side settled with the rental companies (who weren't making much off of PC software rentals anyways as only pirates rented PC software if they even had it at all) leaving the video game people in a lurch and the court decided that much like VHS tapes the decade before they could be rented just like anything else.

This case took years and years to wind its way through the courts and when it was finally all done with in the mid 90's they decided a slightly spiteful tact; the manuals were after all property of the video game companies and could not be duplicated without their consent, so they sued the rental companies for copyright infringement. Pretty much everyone settled or voluntarily started to either not pack a photocopy of the manual or come up with their own instruction sheets.

I once had a tape I rented stolen from me. It was sitting on the hood of my car, I went in my mom's office building to give her something, came back out and it was gone. The case was still there, but it was now empty.

I called up Blockbuster.

"How much to replace a tape you've lost?"
"The fee is $60."

On the way to Blockbuster I swung by the local Wal-Mart and picked up the same movie for $8, then I opened it and put in the case.

I never heard anything about it.

I'm pretty sure that Blockbuster had to pay extra for their copies for licensing reasons.

Three months in a row, while doing inventory, one employee kept coming up as the last employee to have rented out dozens of movies and games that came up as "missing" on the inventory report. The report showed his employee number as who checked them out, they got checked back under a different number but weren't in the store. And there were dozens of them like that, across every category. This is usually a sign that someone is stealing, by checking stuff out then manually "returning" the items by punching in the barcode numbers instead of scanning. We told our store manager about it, he told the district manager about it after the first inventory, she told us we just didn't know how to do our jobs, obviously we were missing things. So my friend and I started checking timestamps for when stuff went out and came back. We went through hours of store security video, watching the one employee check something out, then "return" things using one of the assistant manager's employee numbers, punching it in by hand. We gave the evidence to the store manager, he went directly to the regional manager, who showed up at the store a day later and took the suspect employee in the back, who promptly broke down and admitted everything. Grand total: Nearly $5000 in VHS and DVDs, a rental DVD player, and a rental PS2, about 90% of which he still had in his possession and returned, which netted him just a misdemeanor theft charge instead of a felony.

If he was going to go through all that work anyway, wouldn't it have just been easier for him to just outright steal them?

Three months in a row, while doing inventory, one employee kept coming up as the last employee to have rented out dozens of movies and games that came up as "missing" on the inventory report. The report showed his employee number as who checked them out, they got checked back under a different number but weren't in the store. And there were dozens of them like that, across every category. This is usually a sign that someone is stealing, by checking stuff out then manually "returning" the items by punching in the barcode numbers instead of scanning. We told our store manager about it, he told the district manager about it after the first inventory, she told us we just didn't know how to do our jobs, obviously we were missing things. So my friend and I started checking timestamps for when stuff went out and came back. We went through hours of store security video, watching the one employee check something out, then "return" things using one of the assistant manager's employee numbers, punching it in by hand. We gave the evidence to the store manager, he went directly to the regional manager, who showed up at the store a day later and took the suspect employee in the back, who promptly broke down and admitted everything. Grand total: Nearly $5000 in VHS and DVDs, a rental DVD player, and a rental PS2, about 90% of which he still had in his possession and returned, which netted him just a misdemeanor theft charge instead of a felony.

If he was going to go through all that work anyway, wouldn't it have just been easier for him to just outright steal them?

Doing it his way he would have gotten away with it if not for those meddling kids.

I once had a tape I rented stolen from me. It was sitting on the hood of my car, I went in my mom's office building to give her something, came back out and it was gone. The case was still there, but it was now empty.

I called up Blockbuster.

"How much to replace a tape you've lost?"
"The fee is $60."

On the way to Blockbuster I swung by the local Wal-Mart and picked up the same movie for $8, then I opened it and put in the case.

I never heard anything about it.

I'm pretty sure that Blockbuster had to pay extra for their copies for licensing reasons.

Yeah, when I was working there, rental DVDs cost about £50 each due to the license.

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I love the day when my mom and pop store changed from badly photocopied SNES manuals to a generic hint and instruction page and it was interesting to find out the reason for that years later.

what uh

was the reason

In the late 80's the video game companies, spearheaded by Nintendo joined forces with whatever the US PC software association was and decided to sue practically the entire rental industry in the US.

The software side settled with the rental companies (who weren't making much off of PC software rentals anyways as only pirates rented PC software if they even had it at all) leaving the video game people in a lurch and the court decided that much like VHS tapes the decade before they could be rented just like anything else.

This case took years and years to wind its way through the courts and when it was finally all done with in the mid 90's they decided a slightly spiteful tact; the manuals were after all property of the video game companies and could not be duplicated without their consent, so they sued the rental companies for copyright infringement. Pretty much everyone settled or voluntarily started to either not pack a photocopy of the manual or come up with their own instruction sheets.

i do not remember those at all. but in the late 80s/early 90s my family only went to the mom and pops because Blockbuster had some pretty stringent membership requirements. We didn't start going there until the late or mid 90s so I guess I missed that.

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Mike Danger"Diane..."a place both wonderful and strangeRegistered Userregular

My family patronized the mom-and-pops because the nearest Blockbuster was an additional 15-20 minutes on the drive depending on traffic. One of them died and there was still one closer than Blockbuster. That one died, and they started using BB. That one died, and they used the BB mail service. I tried to get them to go to Netflix, but they couldn't wrap their hands around the interface for some reason. Now they just use On Demand.

I don't understand how On Demand remains a thing that people do. I can either pay $8 for unlimited movies from a library of thousands of films, or I can drive 30 seconds down the street to the nearest Redbox and pay $1 (or less, since Redbox sends me free movie coupons, like, once a week), or I can pay $7 to watch a movie right now and save five minutes. Like, there are people who consider that five minutes more valuable than $6? Unless you're, like, a lawyer or something, your time is not worth $72/hour.

I guess movies sometimes appear On Demand slightly faster than sale and Redbox, but the cost of one of those movies in HD is fucking obscene. It's especially bad now that I use DirecTV, because ordering a movie "On Demand" isn't even immediate. I need to wait a good 30 minutes to let it buffer enough to watch the film without having to pause in the middle. So I'm paying $7 so I can wait longer than going to a Redbox kiosk.

Maddie: "I named my feet. The left one is flip and the right one is flop. Oh, and also I named my flip-flops."

Some On Demand movies are coming at time of theatrical release which is probably their next big thing. But it can be up to a month or two before Red Box, they have much better selections than Red Box or Netflix too.

Problem being that $7 is, I'd think, outside the realm of impulse rental, and if you're planning to make an event out of a film, why not tack on an extra $10 and see it on a huge screen with a great audio system?

I assume people are paying what they're demanding, which is why they keep demanding it, I just don't understand the reasoning.

Like, "I really want to see this movie right now! Except I didn't give that much of a shit when it was in theaters a month ago. But I give enough of a shit that I can't wait another month until I can get it for 20% of the price!" It just seems like something of a niche demographic.

Maybe part of the appeal is that you're not actually paying for it, you're just throwing it onto your future cable bill, which you probably handle with auto-pay anyway, so it doesn't really count. Kinda like you're not really paying $2000 for that $500 TV you just dropped on your credit card that you will make minimum payments on for the next five years.

Maddie: "I named my feet. The left one is flip and the right one is flop. Oh, and also I named my flip-flops."

The only times I've used On Demand is when the film hasn't come out on DVD yet and the cost is reasonably low.

Last summer, Bernie was still at the end of its theatrical run but hard to find, not yet out for rental, and I could get it from PSN for $3.99 in HD. Divided across the other people watching it with me, the hypothetical cost became $1.33 per person, which is pretty reasonable.

I used to work at Hollywood Video. The one thing that I really remember are the bad knock offs that got released right as the real movies hit theaters. Awful cover art, slightly similar names and always a few angry customers who thought they were getting the real deal.

I shudder to think that some day we'll be having and Ode to Bookstores thread.

Goodbye Borders

Oh, Hell no. This will happen over my bullet-ridden corpse.

My first real job that I held down for more than a year was at a Chapters, and Goddamn that place was amazing to work for. They let me get away with being the most irresponsible sack of shit for a loooong time before I finally screwed-up so badly (showed-up, repeatedly, an hour or so late for my shift) they had to terminate me. I wish I'd got that job later in life rather than when I was a shithead teenager.

I still go to bookstores and buy books for the cover price rather than going to Wal Mart or wherever to get the same thing for 10 bucks. Why? Because I buy my books at a book store. A place for books.

I don't understand how On Demand remains a thing that people do. I can either pay $8 for unlimited movies from a library of thousands of films, or I can drive 30 seconds down the street to the nearest Redbox and pay $1 (or less, since Redbox sends me free movie coupons, like, once a week), or I can pay $7 to watch a movie right now and save five minutes. Like, there are people who consider that five minutes more valuable than $6? Unless you're, like, a lawyer or something, your time is not worth $72/hour.

I guess movies sometimes appear On Demand slightly faster than sale and Redbox, but the cost of one of those movies in HD is fucking obscene. It's especially bad now that I use DirecTV, because ordering a movie "On Demand" isn't even immediate. I need to wait a good 30 minutes to let it buffer enough to watch the film without having to pause in the middle. So I'm paying $7 so I can wait longer than going to a Redbox kiosk.

My brother and I used to use On Demand all of the time because the cable company made it stupidly easy to use (You literally just scrolled in the TV guide menu to 'On Demand', accepted the terms/conditions, and boom. You're watching the movie) and it was also stupidly easy, for a while, to abuse the system. You just called in whenever you got the bill and said, "Hey, we don't remember watching Sin City," and they'd just take the charge off. They changed the way it worked after a few months (you had to actually phone in and do whatever other bullshit), go figure, so we stopped.

I don't understand how On Demand remains a thing that people do. I can either pay $8 for unlimited movies from a library of thousands of films, or I can drive 30 seconds down the street to the nearest Redbox and pay $1 (or less, since Redbox sends me free movie coupons, like, once a week), or I can pay $7 to watch a movie right now and save five minutes. Like, there are people who consider that five minutes more valuable than $6? Unless you're, like, a lawyer or something, your time is not worth $72/hour.

I guess movies sometimes appear On Demand slightly faster than sale and Redbox, but the cost of one of those movies in HD is fucking obscene. It's especially bad now that I use DirecTV, because ordering a movie "On Demand" isn't even immediate. I need to wait a good 30 minutes to let it buffer enough to watch the film without having to pause in the middle. So I'm paying $7 so I can wait longer than going to a Redbox kiosk.

I've seen my mother do this when she has guests over and no one can find a film they want to watch on netflix. So their time ends up being limited and there is something that is available on demand that isn't on the ol' Netflix. While the nearest RedBox is only about 10 minutes away sometimes a host doesn't want to pile everyone into the car for various reasons to tap-tap-tap on a screen while hoping to find the thing they wanted (hey you can check redbox inventories online btw)

Problem being that $7 is, I'd think, outside the realm of impulse rental, and if you're planning to make an event out of a film, why not tack on an extra $10 and see it on a huge screen with a great audio system?

I assume people are paying what they're demanding, which is why they keep demanding it, I just don't understand the reasoning.

Like, "I really want to see this movie right now! Except I didn't give that much of a shit when it was in theaters a month ago. But I give enough of a shit that I can't wait another month until I can get it for 20% of the price!" It just seems like something of a niche demographic.

Maybe part of the appeal is that you're not actually paying for it, you're just throwing it onto your future cable bill, which you probably handle with auto-pay anyway, so it doesn't really count. Kinda like you're not really paying $2000 for that $500 TV you just dropped on your credit card that you will make minimum payments on for the next five years.

It's also easy because you're not sliding your card or dropping cash right now... the charge comes on your bill, so you can justify it by not spending money on the rental right now, even though it's effectively the same (and more expensive).

I remember when McDonald's of all places was selling Star Wars and Indiana Jones tapes. Pretty sure that's where I got them as a kid.

In high school I had a friend who worked at the local theater so we got to see just about any movie we wanted, but I remember so many friday or saturday nights where we'd go down to Blockbuster to see what they had. I remember the annoyance of getting there too late and all of the copies of new releases being gone, and having to stand in the ridiculously long lines.

In college Blockbuster was charging like $5 for a new release, whereas Hastings was charging $1.99, so that was a good excuse to jump ship.

I remember when McDonald's of all places was selling Star Wars and Indiana Jones tapes. Pretty sure that's where I got them as a kid.

In high school I had a friend who worked at the local theater so we got to see just about any movie we wanted, but I remember so many friday or saturday nights where we'd go down to Blockbuster to see what they had. I remember the annoyance of getting there too late and all of the copies of new releases being gone, and having to stand in the ridiculously long lines.

In college Blockbuster was charging like $5 for a new release, whereas Hastings was charging $1.99, so that was a good excuse to jump ship.

Best is how On Demand porn is like $16 a movie. Are you that lazy you can't get up from your couch and find your laptop?

I remember someone mentioning paying money for porn at one point and I walked over and was like "What? The internet exists. Do you not understand how free porn is?".

...I sort-of wonder sometimes about how much damage this ultimately did to the movie rental business. I mean, it must have been pretty substantial; part of Blockbuster's core revenue, once upon a time, was built on renting-out adult movies while they had (basically) a monopoly over that sector.

The Internet porn scene must've rattled quite a few rental places at their center.

When I was a kid in a small town Blockbuster didn't arrive for a good long while. Until it did we had a smattering of small rental stores dotted evenly around town, and little rental areas not much larger than a photo booth in odd places like supermarkets. Back before you could check out a thousand reviews online and before I was old enough to regularly read something like Empire the store was basically a game of chance. There'd be a bunch of films you'd heard of, big name blockbusters like Rocky IV or recognised names of quality like Disney, but usually the sole criteria on which you'd judge a film as rentworthy would be the cover, the stars (or maybe the director if you were the kind of kid who paid attention to the credits) and the blurb. It led you to make decisions that kept the mid to low budget action movie a viable prospect in the marketplace.

Rutger Hauer movies set in a post-apocalyptic landscape that was suspiciously empty of anything that cost money looked amazing before you actually saw it. Gene Hackman's run of not great light action movies that nevertheless had the virtue of Gene Hackman as the star. The inexplicably large number of films starring Shannon Tweed, all of which had two word titles that could be swapped around without anyone noticing. The films of Terence Hill and Bud White, which you watched because you knew there'd be a twenty minute punch up at the end more inventive and funny than any other movie could manage. These were films that you knew would never make it to one of the four TV channels and which had bypassed your local cinema entirely, or been out and forgotten before VHS was even invented. Many were the nights I would put on something I'd barely heard of but which, for example, looked kinda like an Indiana Jones movie only to discover I was watching The Armour Of God and my God was this the guy from the Cannonball Run HE IS AMAZING.

Oh, there was one other thing that might get you to rent out a video. The trailers at the start of the last video you'd watched. I loved these more than I can say. Theglory days of the deep-voiced trailer guys, a slow pan up the shiny body of someone like Dolph Lundgren, a brief shot of a woman possibly taking her top off that signalled that at some point in the movie you'd see a nekkid ladee. The simply joys of youth.

We only got rid of our VHS player a couple of years ago, at the same time I managed to offload a couple of hundred VHS cassettes on to a charity store. They were taking up a lot of space and I haven't missed them since. I've also almost entirely stopped buying film DVDs, only picking up TV show boxsets or favourite films priced so cheaply it qualifies as an impulse buy. I've started thinning out my DVD collection as well, getting rid of about fifty or so in the last six months. Physical media. She dying.

When I was a kid, there were two video rental places right across the street from each other. A small mom & pop shop with a very small selection, and a huge place called "Encore Entertainment." The mom & pop shop obviously didn't last long. In hindsight, I'm not sure how they lasted at all. Maybe porn? I was 10 at the time, so no idea.

Eventually, "Encore Entertainment" shut down and was replaced by a Hollywood Video. Hated it. My big problem with Hollywood video is how they wanted to showcase the covers, rather than mostly showcasing titles. That meant much less videos per section. And it was even worse when you basically had an entire wall dedicated to new copies of "Mr. Deeds." We there really 50 people renting that movie on the same weekend? Really?

Eventually a Blockbuster appeared across the street. Hollywood video shut down, and was replaced by a bunch of smaller stores. Blockbuster shut down and was replaced by a bank. By then, I had already moved on to Netflix.

In regards to video games, I think one of the biggest changes is that gamers became a lot older and more affluent. When video games first game out, they were mainly a kids thing, and kids didn't have much money, which means that they couldn't afford to buy the games which means that they had to rent. But then that same generation grew up and got jobs, where they had he money to own.

In regards to On Demand, I think a big issue is "The Paradox of Choice." When people have a virtually unlimited number of options, they have a hard time narrowing down. I think one of the ideas of "On Demand" is that it limits your available options, which makes it less daunting.

Oh, and I'm amazed that we haven't really discussed the annoyance of macrovision.

Man, this thread had me thinking back to more of my stories of when I worked at the mom and pop store, and in retrospect I was a HORRIBLE employee. Not work ethic wise really, but just with how much stuff I got away with.

We would set up systems and play Madden games during work hours. Have Halo LAN parties that listed till 2am after closing. Gave out free rentals in exchange for food from the food places around us. Eat free snacks.

When my parents bought me a Genesis for Christmas, they got the base model one that didn't include any games with it. So, that was pretty rough...after that, we were pretty frequent customers at the local video store renting games for $2.00 / night. For the number of times we rented Sonic / Sonic 2 we probably could have just bought the fucking thing.

I remember going to the video store with my dad and then not being able to find him for a while. It wasn't until I got much older that I realized he was disappearing into the 'back room' and what that actually meant.

So, with regards to renting games and photocopied manuals, a big part of that lawsuit was about PC games. If anyone recalls, at the time copy protection for PC games was usually 'on page XX of the manual, what is the fifth word'? That right there killed the PC rental market, there were a few places around me that would rent out some PC games until that suit went through.

With reference to the above, I remember sitting there and copying by hand some of the 'copy protection' sheets so I could play my pirated games. I don't think anyone ever rented PC games except to pirate them. I remember one of the games was a mid-90's driver / shooter where you drove a cab around some 'Escape from New York' style city, and raised money to buy better guns, etc. Can't remember the name.

In High School, one of my friends was working in a small mom & pop video store that got no traffic at all. He would sit all day and play Playstation / N64 games and ring up the half dozen customers that came in. I'd go and hang out there for hours just playing games, taking them off the rack when we wanted to play something else, etc. It seemed like the best job in the world, of course the place eventually went under.

The last time I had anything to do with Blockbuster was in college, when I rented Mario Party, and the friend that was supposed to return it before they went home for Christmas forgot. I ended up getting a bill, but when I told them I dropped it off and it must be their fault they dropped the charges.

Aside from kid movies / TV shows for my daughter, it's been a long ass time since I've rented or bought any movies. After getting burned on a decent sized VHS collection, and a huge music collection that I never use, I just don't buy much media anymore. Seems like a waste to buy something that's going to be obsolete in a few years anyway. I don't know how many DVD's we've got that haven't even been opened or watched once.

When my parents bought me a Genesis for Christmas, they got the base model one that didn't include any games with it. So, that was pretty rough...after that, we were pretty frequent customers at the local video store renting games for $2.00 / night. For the number of times we rented Sonic / Sonic 2 we probably could have just bought the fucking thing.

I'll one-up here, one of my friends would rent an SNES and game and keep them till they completed it. And I'm talking stuff like RPGs and Lemmings.

I think we finally managed to convince his dad to just buy a damn core set so they could save money and not have to worry about a deposit.